Defeat, Trauma, Lesson: Israel Between Life and Extinction


Book Description

History books are usually written by victors, while the defeated write poetry and words of nostalgia hoping for better days. This volume takes major defeats in Jewish history and tries to describe what happens to a defeated nation, and how in the specific case of Israel and the Jews, the trauma of defeat engenders hope and forces the survivors to learn lessons for the future. The destruction of the two Jewish temples in antiquity, the Holocaust, and the 1973 War serve as case studies to illustrate the problematic. National grief as a result of disasters is a process of recuperation. Drawing lessons learned from the event will help the nation come out of trauma. Survivors commemorating the dead also help that process.




Who Is Right and Who Is Left


Book Description

This volume deals with the dilemma of “just wars,” if any war can be justified. In fact, it is like many other things in life, in the eye of the beholder. For what is just in the eye of the winner and victor, will be wrong and unjustified in the eye of the victim and loser. This is the reason history is written by victors, while the defeated indulge in lamentations and nostalgia. In several historical chapters, this volume brings up several cases from antiquity to our days, of big powers that took the liberty to conquer small nations and subject them to their whims, in the belief that might was right, as well as reversals in history where the crushed victims ultimately gained the upper hand. Therefore, the question of who is right and who is left to tell the story will remain a tale of relative narratives, leaving it to subsequent generations and their (usually biased) historians to rewrite history to their taste.




Patchwork and Its Pitfalls


Book Description

Patchwork and Its Pitfalls: The Cost of Half-Way Solutions describes decision makers’ patchwork actions that occur due to hesitation and lack of firmness and determination. Under the pretext of “humanitarianism,” “saving lives,” or taking an otherwise wimpy action, they end up taking a cowardly action at the cost of human lives and much material damage. The costliest action often turns out to be the cheapest, but is seldom done, while the easiest and apparently cheapest action ends up being the most expensive in the aggregate. This book is important, because indecisive decision makers can emerge in all nations at all times. The author’s inspiration for writing this book: “When I watch politicians who repeatedly take cowardly decisions out of ‘human considerations’ and concern for lives and material preservations, but in fact end up wasting both.”




Summing Up at Age 90


Book Description

This volume looks back at my approaching 90 years of age, and the beginning of my 10th (and assuredly last) decade on this earth. I use my long and diversified scholarly life experience to leave behind a final (and I hope lasting) impression of an Israel where I have lived since age 14, completed my studies, taught thousands of students, and written dozens of books on a variety of topics, mostly related to the Islamic world and some on China. I am departing an Israel that has been traumatized following the sudden deadly attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, on 1,300 Israelis, and the abduction of 240 more into captivity in Gaza, including babies, the elderly, and women, all of whom were abused one way or another. Only a revolutionized Israel in all domains, which is acutely expected by all Israelis, in its military, political, social, cultural, and economic fields is likely to start mending these long-term wounds that have caused dislocation, refugees, misery, and destruction on both the directly related Gaza border, where 22 village communities have been annihilated, and the Lebanese border, where similar carnage and ruin are looming, unless the Hizbullah, which has gratuitously joined the fray, is tamed or defeated.




Old Historians, New Historians, No Historians


Book Description

This polemical volume tackles the thorny and controversial issue of the vastly different narratives told (or manufactured) by the two parties of the conflict in the Middle East (the Arabs and Israel), focusing on 1948, where it all started. While all sides in this debate have vested interests, this author included, an attempt has been made here to reflect the factual truth on the events, although their interpretation will always remain controversial. Although the book argues principally with Benny Morris, the founder and leader of the so-called New Historians, it encompasses a wide array of controversial topics, like the evaluation of the 1948-49 War, the morality of the war (or the necessity to wage it as it was), and its main reverberations, such as the continuing conflict after seven decades, the aggravation of the Palestinian minority in Israel, and the essence of what history means. Israeli argues that the current debate between the so-called Old Historians and the New Historians--itself healthy if and when it is kept to the point and not allowed to degrade into personal libel and recriminations--is not really as unbridgeable as is often claimed. Both sides have erred at points and both sides have some important and complementary light to shed on the contentious events surrounding the birth of Israel.




The Intractable Dispute


Book Description

The Middle East conflict, which has been raging for a century and seems to have no end in sight, is not over territory or other assets, but is historically anchored in the Islamic tradition, which has become the preponderant faith of the Arabs. Being a qualitative factor of an either-or import from the Muslim point of view, which is today best expressed by Iran, the Muslim Brothers, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical Muslim movements, it is not given to negotiation and compromise, as any other political conflict, but is governed by absolutes and one-sided perspectives. Arab nationalism, Islam, and Zionism are the main political and religious movements taking center stage in this conflict. The intractable nature of the conflict has so far defied all negotiations, agreements, and peace treaties. All the proposed “peaceful” settlements have thus far remained brittle, while the fundamental issues of stereotyping, suspicion, hatred, and condescendence have remained in place, unshaken. This book confronts two contradictory ideologies and attempts to bridge them over.




Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD


Book Description

An estimated 70% of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives. Though most recover on their own, up to 20% develop chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. For these people, overcoming PTSD requires the help of a professional. This guide gives clinicians the information they need to treat clients who exhibit the symptoms of PTSD. It is based on the principles of Prolonged Exposure Therapy, the most scientifically-tested and proven treatment that has been used to effectively treat victims of all types of trauma. Whether your client is a veteran of combat, a victim of a physical or sexual assault, or a casualty of a motor vehicle accident, the techniques and strategies outlined in this book will help. In this treatment clients are exposed to imagery of their traumatic memories, as well as real-life situations related to the traumatic event in a step-by-step, controllable way. Through these exposures, your client will learn to confront the trauma and begin to think differently about it, leading to a marked decrease in levels of anxiety and other PTSD symptoms. Clients are provided education about PTSD and other common reactions to traumatic events. Breathing retraining is taught as a method for helping the client manage anxiety in daily life. Designed to be used in conjunction with the corresponding client workbook, this therapist guide includes all the tools necessary to effectively implement the prolonged exposure program including assessment measures, session outlines, case studies, sample dialogues, and homework assignments. This comprehensive resource is an exceptional treatment manual that is sure to help you help your clients reclaim their lives from PTSD. TreatmentsThatWorkTM represents the gold standard of behavioral healthcare interventions! · All programs have been rigorously tested in clinical trials and are backed by years of research · A prestigious scientific advisory board, led by series Editor-In-Chief David H. Barlow, reviews and evaluates each intervention to ensure that it meets the highest standard of evidence so you can be confident that you are using the most effective treatment available to date · Our books are reliable and effective and make it easy for you to provide your clients with the best care available · Our corresponding workbooks contain psychoeducational information, forms and worksheets, and homework assignments to keep clients engaged and motivated · A companion website (www.oup.com/us/ttw) offers downloadable clinical tools and helpful resources · Continuing Education (CE) Credits are now available on select titles in collaboration with PsychoEducational Resources, Inc. (PER)




My Promised Land


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.




Biblical Psychotherapy


Book Description

In Biblical Psychotherapy, Kalman J. Kaplan and Paul Cantz offer a new approach to suicide prevention based on biblical narratives that is designed to overcome the suicidogenic patterns in Greek and Roman stories implicit in modern mental health. More than sixteen suicides and self-mutilations emerge in the twenty-six surviving tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and countless others occurred in Greek and Roman lives. In contrast, only six suicides are found in the Hebrew Scriptures, in addition to a number of suicide-prevention narratives. Kaplan and Cantz reclaim life-enhancing biblical narratives as alternatives to matched suicidal stories in Greek and Roman society with regard to seven evidence-based risk factors. These biblical narratives are employed to treat fourteen patients fitting into the outlined Graeco-Roman suicidal syndromes and to provide an in-depth positive psychology aimed at promoting life rather than simply preventing suicide.




Dancing with Camels


Book Description

It would be such a waste of time if we read the book and do not move on to a next level of followship. The journey of faith should become a cycle of faith with new levels of commitment that will be required as we start higher and deeper levels of the process time and again. Moving from discipleship to apostleship on the journey of faith will require that we sit down and count the cost once again, but this time on a higher level. Let us consider the words of A. J. Nock: The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests. So let us digest, act, and do.